Mattis: Proposed nuke missile is a bargaining chip

RNC Chairman Ronna McDaniel speaks at the Republican National Committee winter meeting in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2018. Hours after her friend and colleague at the RNC had been accused of sexual misconduct, Ronna McDaniel was on the phone with President Donald Trump for a difficult conversation. Casino magnate Steve Wynn, the RNC's finance chairman and a mutual friend, had to step aside, she said to a man who also has faced accusations of sexual misconduct but refused to be derailed by them. McDaniel, the RNC's chairwoman, says the president listened, and ultimately agreed, Wynn had to go.Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s proposal to add a sea-launched cruise missile to the U.S. nuclear arsenal, criticized by some as overkill, is meant to provide new negotiating leverage to U.S. diplomats trying to persuade Russia to end violations of a key arms control treaty, Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday.

“The idea is, once again, to keep our negotiators negotiating from a position of strength,” Mattis told a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, which was released last week. The report proposes two new nuclear weapons: a sea-launched cruise missile and a lower-yield version of an existing ballistic missile.

Mattis linked the cruise missile to Washington’s charge that Russia has been violating the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty by developing and deploying a ground-based cruise missile that is banned by the treaty. Russia denies the charge.

“I don’t think the Russians would be willing to give up something to gain nothing from us,” he said, suggesting the cruise missile is a bargaining chip. Pressed to say whether the U.S. would, in fact, abandon the sea-launched cruise missile if the Russians return to treaty compliance, Mattis dodged. “I don’t want to say in advance of a negotiation.”

The new U.S. posture focuses heavily on what the administration sees as an overdue modernization of the nuclear arsenal, the laboratories and plants that support the arsenal, and the far-flung communications and early warning systems that enable the Pentagon to command and control the weapons. It asserts that Russian strategy and doctrine emphasize the potential coercive and military uses of nuclear weapons, and calls for two new U.S. capabilities in response — a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile and a “low-yield” warhead for submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

The strategy says relatively little about arms control.

“Progress in arms control is not an end in and of itself,” page 73 of the 74-page strategy says, adding that new advances in arms control are “difficult to envision.” Such agreements can foster co-operation and confidence among nuclear weapons states and reduce the risk of miscalculation that could lead to war, it notes — while accusing Russia of undermining those aims by violating numerous treaties.

But the diminution of arms control as a central part of the nuclear strategy may be just as striking.

When the Obama administration did its own reset of the strategy in 2010, it argued the world could be made safer if the U.S. reduced the role of nuclear weapons in defence strategy. It was hardly a novel idea: Republican and Democratic administrations embraced nuclear arms reduction efforts for decades, even during tense points of the Cold War. The Trump administration, for its part, says it’s “willing to engage in a prudent arms control agenda” while dismissing the idea of marginalizing nuclear weapons as a defence tool.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Mattis pushed back against the idea that he is giving short shrift to arms control. He said he recently received a letter from senators expressing concern that the nuclear strategy would undermine traditional U.S. leadership on efforts to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons.

“On the contrary,” Mattis said, the nuclear strategy reaffirms the role of nuclear weapons in national defence “while underscoring continued U.S. commitment to non-proliferation, to counter nuclear terrorism and to arms control.”

Russia was quick to assail what it deemed an “anti-Russian” nuclear strategy. In a statement Monday, its Foreign Ministry called the review’s assertions frightening, “utterly hypocritical” and dangerous. It asserted that Russia would consider using nuclear weapons in only two scenarios: in response to an attack involving nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, and in response to a non-nuclear assault that endangered the survival of the Russian nation.

It took aim at the Pentagon’s proposal to develop a nuclear cruise missile that could be launched from a ship or submarine. Such a weapon existed for years but was withdrawn from active service by the administration of President George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s and retired by the Obama administration.

Bringing a version of the missile back would be a response to Russia’s alleged violation of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, the Pentagon said, adding that it might reconsider if Moscow returned to compliance and “corrects its other destabilizing behaviours.”

James Acton, a nuclear weapons specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that offer seems disingenuous.

“That is a proposal that is very clearly designed to look like an arms control proposal, but to guarantee that it won’t be accepted,” Acton said. He broadly described the U.S. strategy’s approach to arm control as worrying, including its silence on whether the U.S. wants to exercise an option in the New START treaty to extend its terms for five years. The deal is scheduled to expire in 2021.

Russia is questioning U.S. compliance with the treaty, whose limitations on long-range nuclear weapons took effect Monday. The Foreign Ministry said Russia is well within the treaty’s limitations of 1,550 strategy nuclear warheads and 700 deployed launchers.

The ministry took note of a State Department statement saying the U.S. reached the treaty limits last August, but it suggested the U.S. may have cheated by “reconfiguring” some B-52 bomber aircraft and missile launchers aboard Ohio-class submarines to non-nuclear status. It didn’t provide details but said the changes were done in such a way that Russia is unable to confirm that the reconfigured B-52s and sub-based launchers are truly non-nuclear.

The State Department insisted the U.S. is fully adhering to its commitments.

“In order to meet the central limits of the treaty, the United States developed and utilized conversion procedures in full compliance with its treaty obligations,” it said.

Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has released its last budget before the fall federal election

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